The Witches of Barrow Wood by Kenneth Balfour

Chapter One
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

    It was a cold, dark night, and the wind howled through the trees of Barrow Wood. The woodland was dense with trees and as the wind blew, whispers could be heard. The villagers believed an evil lurked within the wood, as stories had been passed from generation to generation for hundreds of years. Some told of a witch, crooked and old, and plagued with ugliness and eternal life. And some spoke of ghosts of the bodies buried within the barrows – the prehistoric burial mounds.
    Barrow was the name given to the small village that hosted just shy of one hundred people. The first settlers discovered the barrows within the wood a thousand years ago, and no one knows of the occupants – no one human, anyway. Old journals say that some of the mounds were excavated, and all those that looked upon the deformed bones died in a matter of hours, choking on their own vomit.
    Few dared to go into the woodland, and those that were brave enough to venture in and ignore the stories came out unharmed, although the story was always the same: whispers could be heard and a feeling of being watched was ever-present. On occasion, the villagers would walk their dogs near the outskirts of the wood, but their pets would run loose into the woodland and some were never seen again.

    ***

    Sam Barton awoke early one Saturday during his summer holidays, and ran downstairs to get a bowl of his very favourite cereal. He was only seven years old, and it was quite a stretch to reach up into the cupboard. He managed it nonetheless. He filled his bowl to the brim with his sugar puffs and then went to the fridge for his milk. As he started to pour the milk, he lost his grip, and the glass bottle smashed to the floor. Sam looked up in fear. His mother had gone out to the shops and his father was an angry man.
    John shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you done, boy?”
    â€œI… I’m sorry, Dad, I didn’t mean to – it slipped!” said Sam, cowering to the ground and trying to clean the spill with a tea towel.
    â€œI’ll give you sorry, lad!”
    John grabbed Sam by the hair, lifting him from the ground, and then carried him to his bedroom. He threw his son to the ground and prepared to strike the boy. Sam cowered in the corner and closed his eyes and started crying. John struck his son with all of his might, grinding his teeth and preparing for another blow. Again and again, he hit his boy, until little Sam could barely breathe.
    â€œYou tell your mother and you’ll get it again. Stay in your room, boy!” said John, grinning, and then making his way back downstairs.
    Sam crawled up into his covers and sobbed. He daren’t tell his mother, as it would break her heart, and so far as he knew it was only him that his father hit. Sam wondered what to do. He dreamed of running away, but feared that would only hurt his mum. He figured that maybe he would venture into Barrow Wood, and maybe then he would be missed.
    Clare arrived home with her bags of shopping and wasn’t surprised to see her husband sitting watching television with a can of lager. She shook her head in utter disbelief that someone would want to be drinking alcohol so early in the day. She smiled at John and walked to the kitchen to unpack her shopping.
    Unbeknownst to her little boy, Clare had been struck by John countless times over their ten-year marriage, but she loved him regardless and had learned to live with it. She loved her little boy more than life itself, and could not leave John even if she wanted to, because she believed that Sam needed his father, and needed a stable family life.
    Little Sam curled up in his bed covers with one of his favourite toy cars – a little yellow Suzuki. He thought about his parents, whom he loved with all of his heart and soul, but his heart broke a little every time his father hit him. He thought that he must be a very naughty boy to upset his